An Oldport Romance

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This etext was prepared by Judy Boss, Omaha, NE

MALBONE: AN OLDPORT ROMANCE.

by THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

"What is Nature unless there is an eventful human life passing
within her?

Many joys and many sorrows are the lights and shadows in which
she shows most beautiful."--THOREAU, MS. Diary.

CONTENTS.

PRELUDE
I. AN ARRIVAL
II. PLACE AUX DAMES!
III. A DRIVE ON THE AVENUE
IV. AUNT JANE DEFINES HER POSITION
V. A MULTIVALVE HEART
VI. "SOME LOVER'S CLEAR DAY"
VII. AN INTERNATIONAL EXPOSITION
VIII. TALKING IT OVER
IX. DANGEROUS WAYS
X. REMONSTRANCES
XI. DESCENSUS AVERNI
XII. A NEW ENGAGEMENT
XIII. DREAMING DREAMS
XIV. THE NEMESIS OF FASHION
XV. ACROSS THE BAY
XVI. ON THE STAIRS
XVII. DISCOVERY
XVIII. HOPE'S VIGIL
XIX. DE PROFUNDIS
XX. AUNT JANE TO THE RESCUE
XXI. A STORM
XXII. OUT OF THE DEPTHS
XXIII. REQUIESCAT

MALBONE.

PRELUDE.

AS one wanders along this southwestern promontory of the Isle
of Peace, and looks down upon the green translucent water which
forever bathes the marble slopes of the Pirates' Cave, it is
natural to think of the ten wrecks with which the past winter
has strewn this shore. Though almost all trace of their
presence is already gone, yet their mere memory lends to these
cliffs a human interest. Where a stranded vessel lies, thither
all steps converge, so long as one plank remains upon another.
There centres the emotion. All else is but the setting, and the
eye sweeps with indifference the line of unpeopled rocks. They
are barren, till the imagination has tenanted them with
possibilities of danger and dismay. The ocean provides the
scenery and properties of a perpetual tragedy, but the interest
arrives with the performers. Till then the shores remain
vacant, like the great conventional armchairs of the French
drama, that wait for Rachel to come and die.

Yet as I ride along this fashionable avenue in August, and
watch the procession of the young and fair,--as I look at
stately houses, from each of which has gone forth almost within
my memory a funeral or a bride,--then every thoroughfare of
human life becomes in fancy but an ocean shore, with its
ripples and its wrecks. One learns, in growing older, that no
fiction can be so strange nor appear so improbable as would the
simple truth; and that doubtless even Shakespeare did but
timidly transcribe a few of the deeds and passions he had
personally known. For no man of middle age can dare trust
himself to portray life in its full intensity, as he has
studied or shared it; he must resolutely set aside as
indescribable the things most worth describing, and must expect
to be charged with exaggeration, even when he tells the rest.

I.

AN ARRIVAL.

IT was one of the changing days of our Oldport midsummer. In
the morning it had rained in rather a dismal way, and Aunt Jane
had said she should put it in her diary. It was a very serious
thing for the elements when they got into Aunt Jane's diary. By
noon the sun came out as clear and sultry as if there had never
been a cloud, the northeast wind died away, the bay was
motionless, the first locust of the summer shrilled from the
elms, and the robins seemed to be serving up butterflies hot
for their insatiable second brood, while nothing seemed
desirable for a human luncheon except ice-cream and fans. In
the afternoon the southwest wind came up the bay, with its line
of dark-blue ripple and its delicious coolness; while the hue
of the water grew more and more intense, till we seemed to be
living in the heart of a sapphire.

The household sat beneath the large western doorway of the old
Maxwell House,--he rear door, which looks on the water. The
house had just been reoccupied by my Aunt Jane, whose
great-grandfather had built it, though it had for several
generations been out of the family. I know no finer specimen of
those large colonial dwellings in which the genius of Sir
Christopher Wren bequeathed traditions of stateliness to our
democratic days. Its central hall has a carved archway; most
of the rooms have painted tiles and are wainscoted to the
ceiling; the sashes are red-cedar, the great staircase
mahogany; there are pilasters with delicate Corinthian
capitals; there are cherubs' heads and wings that go astray and
lose themselves in closets and behind glass doors; there are
curling acanthus-leaves that cluster over shelves and ledges,
and there are those graceful shell-patterns which one often
sees on old furniture, but rarely in houses. The high front
door still retains its Ionic cornice; and the western entrance,
looking on the bay, is surmounted by carved fruit and flowers,
and is crowned, as is the roof, with that pineapple in whose
symbolic wealth the rich merchants of the last century
delighted.

Like most of the statelier houses in that region of Oldport,
this abode had its rumors of a ghost and of secret chambers.
The ghost had never been properly lionized nor laid, for Aunt
Jane, the neatest of housekeepers, had discouraged all silly
explorations, had at once required all barred windows to be
opened, all superfluous partitions to be taken down, and
several highly eligible dark-closets to be nailed up. If there
was anything she hated, it was nooks and odd corners. Yet there
had been times that year, when the household would have been
glad to find a few more such hiding-places; for during the
first few weeks the house had been crammed with guests so
closely that the very mice had been ill-accommodated and
obliged to sit up all night, which had caused them much
discomfort and many audible disagreements.

But this first tumult had passed away; and now there remained
only the various nephews and nieces of the house, including a
due proportion of small children. Two final guests were to
arrive that day, bringing the latest breath of Europe on their
wings,--Philip Malbone, Hope's betrothed; and little Emilia,
Hope's half-sister.

None of the family had seen Emilia since her wandering mother
had taken her abroad, a fascinating spoiled child of four, and
they were all eager to see in how many ways the succeeding
twelve years had completed or corrected the spoiling. As for
Philip, he had been spoiled, as Aunt Jane declared, from the
day of his birth, by the joint effort of all friends and
neighbors. Everybody had conspired to carry on the process
except Aunt Jane herself, who directed toward him one of her
honest, steady, immovable dislikes, which may be said to have
dated back to the time when his father and mother were married,
some years before he personally entered on the scene.

The New York steamer, detained by the heavy fog of the night
before, now came in unwonted daylight up the bay. At the first
glimpse, Harry and the boys pushed off in the row-boat; for, as
one of the children said, anybody who had been to Venice would
naturally wish to come to the very house in a gondola. In
another half-hour there was a great entanglement of embraces at
the water-side, for the guests had landed.

Malbone's self-poised easy grace was the same as ever; his
chestnut-brown eyes were as winning, his features as handsome;
his complexion, too clearly pink for a man, had a sea bronze
upon it: he was the same Philip who had left home, though with
some added lines of care. But in the brilliant little fairy
beside him all looked in vain for the Emilia they remembered as
a child. Her eyes were more beautiful than ever,--the darkest
violet eyes, that grew luminous with thought and almost black
with sorrow. Her gypsy taste, as everybody used to call it,
still showed itself in the scarlet and dark blue of her dress;
but the clouded gypsy tint had gone from her cheek, and in its
place shone a deep carnation, so hard and brilliant that it
appeared to be enamelled on the surface, yet so firm and
deep-dyed that it seemed as if not even death could ever blanch
it. There is a kind of beauty that seems made to be painted on
ivory, and such was hers. Only the microscopic pencil of a
miniature-painter could portray those slender eyebrows, that
arched caressingly over the beautiful eyes,--or the silky hair
of darkest chestnut that crept in a wavy line along the
temples, as if longing to meet the brows,--or those unequalled
lashes! "Unnecessarily long," Aunt Jane afterwards pronounced
them; while Kate had to admit that they did indeed give Emilia
an overdressed look at breakfast, and that she ought to have a
less showy set to match her morning costume.

But what was most irresistible about Emilia,--that which we all
noticed in this interview, and which haunted us all
thenceforward,--was a certain wild, entangled look she wore, as
of some untamed out-door thing, and a kind of pathetic lost
sweetness in her voice, which made her at once and forever a
heroine of romance with the children. Yet she scarcely seemed
to heed their existence, and only submitted to the kisses of
Hope and Kate as if that were a part of the price of coming
home, and she must pay it.

Had she been alone, there might have been an awkward pause; for
if you expect a cousin, and there alights a butterfly of the
tropics, what hospitality can you offer? But no sense of
embarrassment ever came near Malbone, especially with the
children to swarm over him and claim him for their own.
Moreover, little Helen got in the first remark in the way of
serious conversation.

"Let me tell him something!" said the child. "Philip! that
doll of mine that you used to know, only think! she was sick
and died last summer, and went into the rag-bag. And the other
split down the back, so there was an end of her."

Polar ice would have been thawed by this reopening of
communication. Philip soon had the little maid on his
shoulder,--the natural throne of all children,--and they went
in together to greet Aunt Jane.

Aunt Jane was the head of the house,--a lady who had spent more
than fifty years in educating her brains and battling with her
ailments. She had received from her parents a considerable
inheritance in the way of whims, and had nursed it up into a
handsome fortune. Being one of the most impulsive of human
beings, she was naturally one of the most entertaining; and
behind all her eccentricities there was a fund of the soundest
sense and the tenderest affection. She had seen much and varied
society, had been greatly admired in her youth, but had chosen
to remain unmarried. Obliged by her physical condition to make
herself the first object, she was saved from utter selfishness
by sympathies as democratic as her personal habits were
exclusive. Unexpected and commonly fantastic in her doings,
often dismayed by small difficulties, but never by large ones,
she sagaciously administered the affairs of all those around
her,--planned their dinners and their marriages, fought out
their bargains and their feuds.

She hated everything irresolute or vague; people might play at
cat's-cradle or study Spinoza, just as they pleased; but,
whatever they did, they must give their minds to it. She kept
house from an easy-chair, and ruled her dependants with
severity tempered by wit, and by the very sweetest voice in
which reproof was ever uttered. She never praised them, but if
they did anything particularly well, rebuked them
retrospectively, asking why they had never done it well before?
But she treated them munificently, made all manner of plans for
their comfort, and they all thought her the wisest and wittiest
of the human race. So did the youths and maidens of her large
circle; they all came to see her, and she counselled, admired,
scolded, and petted them all. She had the gayest spirits, and
an unerring eye for the ludicrous, and she spoke her mind with
absolute plainness to all comers. Her intuitions were
instantaneous as lightning, and, like that, struck very often
in the wrong place. She was thus extremely unreasonable and
altogether charming.

Such was the lady whom Emilia and Malbone went up to
greet,--the one shyly, the other with an easy assurance, such
as she always disliked. Emilia submitted to another kiss, while
Philip pressed Aunt Jane's hand, as he pressed all women's, and
they sat down.

"Now begin to tell your adventures," said Kate. "People always
tell their adventures till tea is ready."

"Who can have any adventures left," said Philip, "after such
letters as I wrote you all?"

"Of which we got precisely one!" said Kate. "That made it such
an event, after we had wondered in what part of the globe you
might be looking for the post-office! It was like finding a
letter in a bottle, or disentangling a person from the Dark
Ages."

"I was at Neuchatel two months; but I had no adventures. I
lodged with a good Pasteur, who taught me geology and German."

"That is suspicious," said Kate. "Had he a daughter passing
fair?"

"Indeed he had."

"And you taught her English? That is what these beguiling
youths always do in novels."

"Yes."

"What was her name?"

"Lili."

"What a pretty name! How old was she?"

"She was six."

"O Philip!" cried Kate; "but I might have known it. Did she
love you very much?"

Hope looked up, her eyes full of mild reproach at the
possibility of doubting any child's love for Philip. He had
been her betrothed for more than a year, during which time she
had habitually seen him wooing every child he had met as if it
were a woman,--which, for Philip, was saying a great deal.
Happily they had in common the one trait of perfect amiability,
and she knew no more how to be jealous than he to be constant.

"Lili was easily won," he said. "Other things being equal,
people of six prefer that man who is tallest."

"Philip is not so very tall," said the eldest of the boys, who
was listening eagerly, and growing rapidly.

"No," said Philip, meekly. "But then the Pasteur was short,
and his brother was a dwarf."

"When Lili found that she could reach the ceiling from Mr.
Malbone's shoulder," said Emilia, "she asked no more."

"Then you knew the pastor's family also, my child," said Aunt
Jane, looking at her kindly and a little keenly.

"I was allowed to go there sometimes," she began, timidly.

"To meet her American Cousin," interrupted Philip. "I got some
relaxation in the rules of the school. But, Aunt Jane, you
have told us nothing about your health."

"There is nothing to tell," she answered. "I should like, if
it were convenient, to be a little better. But in this life,
if one can walk across the floor, and not be an idiot, it is
something. That is all I aim at."

"Isn't it rather tiresome?" said Emilia, as the elder lady
happened to look at her.

"Not at all," said Aunt Jane, composedly. "I naturally fall
back into happiness, when left to myself."

"So you have returned to the house of your fathers," said
Philip. "I hope you like it."

"It is commonplace in one respect," said Aunt Jane. "General
Washington once slept here."

"Oh!" said Philip. "It is one of that class of houses?"

"Yes," said she. "There is not a village in America that has
not half a dozen of them, not counting those where he only
breakfasted. Did ever man sleep like that man? What else could
he ever have done? Who governed, I wonder, while he was asleep?
How he must have travelled! The swiftest horse could scarcely
have carried him from one of these houses to another."

"I never was attached to the memory of Washington," meditated
Philip; "but I always thought it was the pear-tree. It must
have been that he was such a very unsettled person."

"He certainly was not what is called a domestic character,"
said Aunt Jane.

"I suppose you are, Miss Maxwell," said Philip. "Do you often
go out?"

"Sometimes, to drive," said Aunt Jane. "Yesterday I went
shopping with Kate, and sat in the carriage while she bought
under-sleeves enough for a centipede. It is always so with
that child. People talk about the trouble of getting a daughter
ready to be married; but it is like being married once a month
to live with her."

"I wonder that you take her to drive with you," suggested
Philip, sympathetically.

"It is a great deal worse to drive without her," said the
impetuous lady. "She is the only person who lets me enjoy
things, and now I cannot enjoy them in her absence. Yesterday
I drove alone over the three beaches, and left her at home with
a dress-maker. Never did I see so many lines of surf; but they
only seemed to me like some of Kate's ball-dresses, with the
prevailing flounces, six deep. I was so enraged that she was
not there, I wished to cover my face with my handkerchief. By
the third beach I was ready for the madhouse."

"Is Oldport a pleasant place to live in?" asked Emilia,
eagerly.

"It is amusing in the summer," said Aunt Jane, "though the
society is nothing but a pack of visiting-cards. In winter it
is too dull for young people, and only suits quiet old women
like me, who merely live here to keep the Ten Commandments and
darn their stockings."

Meantime the children were aiming at Emilia, whose butterfly
looks amazed and charmed them, but who evidently did not know
what to do with their eager affection.

"I know about you," said little Helen; "I know what you said
when you were little."

"Did I say anything?" asked Emilia, carelessly.

"Yes," replied the child, and began to repeat the oft-told
domestic tradition in an accurate way, as if it were a school
lesson. "Once you had been naughty, and your papa thought it
his duty to slap you, and you cried; and he told you in French,
because he always spoke French with you, that he did not punish
you for his own pleasure. Then you stopped crying, and asked,
'Pour le plaisir de qui alors?' That means 'For whose pleasure
then?' Hope said it was a droll question for a little girl to
ask."

"I do not think it was Emilia who asked that remarkable
question, little girl," said Kate.

"I dare say it was," said Emilia; "I have been asking it all my
life." Her eyes grew very moist, what with fatigue and
excitement. But just then, as is apt to happen in this world,
they were all suddenly recalled from tears to tea, and the
children smothered their curiosity in strawberries and cream.

They sat again beside the western door, after tea. The young
moon came from a cloud and dropped a broad path of glory upon
the bay; a black yacht glided noiselessly in, and anchored amid
this tract of splendor. The shadow of its masts was on the
luminous surface, while their reflection lay at a different
angle, and seemed to penetrate far below. Then the departing
steamer went flashing across this bright realm with gorgeous
lustre; its red and green lights were doubled in the paler
waves, its four reflected chimneys chased each other among the
reflected masts. This jewelled wonder passing, a single
fishing-boat drifted silently by, with its one dark sail; and
then the moon and the anchored yacht were left alone.

Presently some of the luggage came from the wharf. Malbone
brought out presents for everybody; then all the family went to
Europe in photographs, and with some reluctance came back to
America for bed.

II.

PLACE AUX DAMES!

IN every town there is one young maiden who is the universal
favorite, who belongs to all sets and is made an exception to
all family feuds, who is the confidante of all girls and the
adopted sister of all young men, up to the time when they
respectively offer themselves to her, and again after they are
rejected. This post was filled in Oldport, in those days, by
my cousin Kate.

Born into the world with many other gifts, this last and least
definable gift of popularity was added to complete them all.
Nobody criticised her, nobody was jealous of her, her very
rivals lent her their new music and their lovers; and her own
discarded wooers always sought her to be a bridesmaid when they
married somebody else.

She was one of those persons who seem to have come into the
world well-dressed. There was an atmosphere of elegance around
her, like a costume; every attitude implied a presence-chamber
or a ball-room. The girls complained that in private
theatricals no combination of disguises could reduce Kate to
the ranks, nor give her the "make-up" of a waiting-maid. Yet as
her father was a New York merchant of the precarious or
spasmodic description, she had been used from childhood to the
wildest fluctuations of wardrobe;--a year of Paris
dresses,--then another year spent in making over ancient
finery, that never looked like either finery or antiquity when
it came from her magic hands. Without a particle of vanity or
fear, secure in health and good-nature and invariable
prettiness, she cared little whether the appointed means of
grace were ancient silk or modern muslin. In her periods of
poverty, she made no secret of the necessary devices; the other
girls, of course, guessed them, but her lovers never did,
because she always told them. There was one particular tarlatan
dress of hers which was a sort of local institution. It was
known to all her companions, like the State House. There was a
report that she had first worn it at her christening; the
report originated with herself. The young men knew that she was
going to the party if she could turn that pink tarlatan once
more; but they had only the vaguest impression what a tarlatan
was, and cared little on which side it was worn, so long as
Kate was inside.

During these epochs of privation her life, in respect to dress,
was a perpetual Christmas-tree of second-hand gifts. Wealthy
aunts supplied her with cast-off shoes of all sizes, from two
and a half up to five, and she used them all. She was reported
to have worn one straw hat through five changes of fashion. It
was averred that, when square crowns were in vogue, she
flattened it over a tin pan, and that, when round crowns
returned, she bent it on the bedpost. There was such a charm
in her way of adapting these treasures, that the other girls
liked to test her with new problems in the way of millinery and
dress-making; millionnaire friends implored her to trim their
hats, and lent her their own things in order to learn how to
wear them. This applied especially to certain rich cousins, shy
and studious girls, who adored her, and to whom society only
ceased to be alarming when the brilliant Kate took them under
her wing, and graciously accepted a few of their newest
feathers. Well might they acquiesce, for she stood by them
superbly, and her most favored partners found no way to her
hand so sure as to dance systematically through that staid
sisterhood. Dear, sunshiny, gracious, generous Kate!--who has
ever done justice to the charm given to this grave old world by
the presence of one free-hearted and joyous girl?

At the time now to be described, however, Kate's purse was well
filled; and if she wore only second-best finery, it was because
she had lent her very best to somebody else. All that her
doting father asked was to pay for her dresses, and to see her
wear them; and if her friends wore a part of them, it only made
necessary a larger wardrobe, and more varied and pleasurable
shopping. She was as good a manager in wealth as in poverty,
wasted nothing, took exquisite care of everything, and saved
faithfully for some one else all that was not needed for her
own pretty person.

Pretty she was throughout, from the parting of her jet-black
hair to the high instep of her slender foot; a glancing,
brilliant, brunette beauty, with the piquant charm of perpetual
spirits, and the equipoise of a perfectly healthy nature. She
was altogether graceful, yet she had not the fresh, free grace
of her cousin

Hope, who was lithe and strong as a hawthorne spray: Kate's
was the narrower grace of culture grown hereditary, an in-door
elegance that was born in her, and of which dancing-school was
but the natural development. You could not picture Hope to your
mind in one position more than in another; she had an endless
variety of easy motion. When you thought of Kate, you
remembered precisely how she sat, how she stood, and how she
walked. That was all, and it was always the same. But is not
that enough? We do not ask of Mary Stuart's portrait that it
should represent her in more than one attitude, and why should
a living beauty need more than two or three?

Kate was betrothed to her cousin Harry, Hope's brother, and,
though she was barely twenty, they had seemed to appertain to
each other for a time so long that the memory of man or maiden
aunt ran not to the contrary. She always declared, indeed, that
they were born married, and that their wedding-day would seem
like a silver wedding. Harry was quiet, unobtrusive, and manly.
He might seem commonplace at first beside the brilliant Kate
and his more gifted sister; but thorough manhood is never
commonplace, and he was a person to whom one could anchor. His
strong, steadfast physique was the type of his whole nature;
when he came into the room, you felt as if a good many people
had been added to the company. He made steady progress in his
profession of the law, through sheer worth; he never dazzled,
but he led. His type was pure Saxon, with short, curling hair,
blue eyes, and thin, fair skin, to which the color readily
mounted. Up to a certain point he was imperturbably patient
and amiable, but, when overtaxed, was fiery and impetuous for a
single instant, and no more. It seemed as if a sudden flash of
anger went over him, like the flash that glides along the
glutinous stem of the fraxinella, when you touch it with a
candle; the next moment it had utterly vanished, and was
forgotten as if it had never been.

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